PinnedIntroductionWhen I was six, I often asked my parents and relatives about what happens after death, and these typical Soviet materialists of those days always said that nothing happens, nothing at all. …Philosophy2 min readPhilosophy2 min read
Oct 4, 2021Why Bernardo Kastrup’s version of idealism is baloneyBernardo Kastrup is a talented basher of the pseudoscientific metaphysical mythology of materialism (physicalism), dualism, panpsychism, and other “matter-included” erroneous ontologies. However, his own version of ontological idealism (consciousness-only ontology) is utterly absurd and dangerously misleading. Kastrup’s absurd Schopenhauerish vision of Transcendence (consciousness-in-itself) as a dissociating instinctive impetus conflicts with…Idealism3 min readIdealism3 min read
May 30, 2021Природа реальности“В известной поэтической картине Платон сравнил людей с узниками, закованными в пещере, которые могут смотреть только в одном направлении. За ними горит огонь, и они видят на стене только тени своих собственных тел и объектов, находящихся сзади них. Так как эти узники ничего не могут видеть, кроме теней, то тени…Философия59 min readФилософия59 min read
Jan 5, 2021Eleusinian Mysteries“[A]mong the many exceptional and divine things your Athens has produced and contributed to human life, nothing is better than those [Eleusinian] Mysteries. For by means of them we have been transformed from a rough and savage way of life to the state of humanity, and have been civilized. Just…Psychedelics12 min readPsychedelics12 min read
Nov 5, 2020Buddhahood“The existence that characterizes such things as your body, your possessions, and the world around you … is the interplay of the grasping and the grasped of [transcendental] consciousness (ālayavijñāna). … Meditation, meditator, and object of meditation … are nothing but [mental] projections. … Nirvāṇa is the cessation of [transcendental]…Philosophy7 min readPhilosophy7 min read
Oct 13, 2020Brain“The whole problem of neuroscience … is how to connect brain activity with consciousness, and all we can say in general is that these processes are running in parallel.” — Oliver Sacks* What is consciousness? They say it is a product of the brain. What is the brain? They say…Philosophy4 min readPhilosophy4 min read
Dec 19, 2019Ultimate lessons“Mysticism has been called “the great spiritual current which goes through all religions.” In its widest sense it may be defined as the consciousness of the One Reality — be it called Wisdom, Light, Love, or Nothing. … [T]he reality that is the goal of the mystic, and is ineffable…Philosophy7 min readPhilosophy7 min read
Dec 12, 2019What is your God?“Even in the bareness of abstraction, our relation to Transcendence can take on a crucial seriousness. But as men in our world we seek support for our certainty in the concrete. Man’s supreme achievement in this world is communication from personality to personality. Accordingly, our relation to Transcendence, if we…Religion3 min readReligion3 min read
Dec 8, 2019Time“[F]rom the succession of ideas and impressions we form the idea of time… [T]ime cannot make its appearance to the mind, either alone, or attended with a steady unchangeable object, but is always discovered by some perceivable succession of changeable objects.” — David Hume “I do not feel alive, psychologically…Consciousness6 min readConsciousness6 min read
Dec 6, 2019Good and evil“There is nothing it is possible to think of anywhere in the world, or indeed anything at all outside it, that can be held to be good without limitation, excepting only a good will.” — Immanuel Kant “In being things have a rank, but to rank low is not evil…Philosophy3 min readPhilosophy3 min read
